The Court of Justice of the European Union handed down a judgment, published this Friday, October 4, in which it declared certain Fifa rules contrary to European rules on competition and the free movement of people.
The affair began in 2014. Former French international player Lassana Diarra, then a player at Lokomotiv Moscow, had unilaterally terminated his contract after a disagreement over his salary.
In accordance with Fifa rules, this unilateral termination of contract allowed Lokomotiv Moscow not to issue the player with an international transfer certificate (ITC), necessary to sign with another club. The transfer of Lassana Diarra to the Belgian club Charleroi was then impossible. The player was also liable, in accordance with Fifa rules, for compensation of 10.5 million euros to be paid to Lokomotiv Moscow for breach of contract without valid reason. Finally, if a new club wanted to hire the player, it would have been forced to contribute to the payment of this sum.
All these constraints, having largely contributed to paralyzing his career, led the player to take legal action and attack Fifa as well as the Belgian Football Federation to challenge the conformity of Fifa’s regulations with European law, particularly in matters of free movement of workers and free competition. The Court of Appeal of Mons (Belgium) then filed a request for a preliminary ruling under Article 267 TFEU in order to determine whether the FIFA rules complied with the rules of the Treaty on the Functioning of the EU.
In its decision, the Court of Justice of the European Union ruled that if “ the objective of ensuring the regularity of sports competitions constitutes a legitimate objective of general interest which can be pursued by a sports association » Fifa’s rules are disproportionate and, in some cases, contrary to paragraph 1 of Article 101 TFEU.
Indeed, for the CJEU “ the rules at issue in the main proceedings are likely to hinder the freedom of movement of workers ».
Fifa could therefore be required to modify some of its rules in order to comply with European Union law, thus allowing players to unilaterally terminate their contract without penalizing their future club.
